Another War, Another Peace

by Ronald J. Glasser

  A psychiatrist during basic giving the lectures on combat exhaustion had ended the hour with one bit of advice. “No matter what else is demanded of you, remember that first and foremost you are physicians. Do what you’ve been trained to do, what you do best.” And that, from then on, was exactly what David intended to do.

  Tom tried to talk once, but David refused to answer.

  Chapter 14

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN he was right?” David asked in disbelief.

  “From what you told me,” Cramer said, “Griffen lanced the abscess.”

  “If you mean he stuck a hunting knife into some four-year-old’s thigh, then he lanced an abscess!”

  Cramer maintained the calm, almost beatific air he reserved for discussions already settled by a directive or an Army regulation. “David,” Cramer said, “look at it from the Vietnamese doctor’s point of view. This is not the easiest life over here; pretty primitive, in fact. And then all of a sudden someone from another country—a richer, more technically advanced country—comes in, builds a hospital, fills in with state-of-the-art equipment, uses the newer technology and procedures and, on top of everything else, gives it away free. Now how do you think you’d feel?”

  “Ted,” David said, “I’m talking about a child with an abscess. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “What I’m talking about,” Cramer went on soothingly, “is policy, and policy at the highest level. We’re here in this country as guests, and we don’t want to have our hosts angry at us. They have enough to worry about without worrying about their friends.”

  David was able to maintain his equilibrium only because of the blatant absurdity of what Cramer was saying. “Ted,” David said, barely able to control his voice, “in case you haven’t noticed, the 40th is not exactly a state-of-the-art referral center, and in case you haven’t checked lately, there aren’t any Vietnamese hospitals out there on the plateau and there aren’t any Vietnamese doctors. There’s nothing out there, fee-for-service or free.”

  His comments didn’t seem to affect Cramer. If anything, Cramer looked frustrated, as if David had refused to see the obvious.

  “We need the Vietnamese as our friends,” Cramer said. “In a war, you can’t make special rules for cities and others for the countryside. The doctors in Saigon and Hue, like the doctors in the States, are a powerful and important group of people. Now, there’s a province hospital near Do Ti. They could go there.”

  “Do Ti! That’s forty kilometers from where we were.”

  “David, believe me, you’re doing a fine job. We all know it and appreciate it, and that includes Med Command and MACV, but we don’t want to do anything over here to make things more difficult in the long run. It’s not going to be to the Vietnamese’s advantage if we make them too dependent on us.”

  “Dependent on us!” David had had enough. “In case you haven’t seen it, we’re fighting for ’em.”

  “You haven’t been listening to Tyler, have you?”

  “Tyler! For Christ’s sake.”

  “He’s a troublemaker.”

  David was too disgusted to go on.

  “Where are you going?” Cramer asked.

  “Don’t worry, Ted. You’re leaving, remember? And besides, what hospital commanders don’t know can’t hurt ’em.

  It took David half an hour to track down the instruments and surgical packs he needed. Tyler was in the dispensary, melting wax as a base for one of his ointments, when David walked in carrying the gear. When Tyler saw the look on David’s face, he put down the flask. David ignored him for a moment while he opened the packages, putting the rolls of gauze and clamps into the drawer of his desk.

  “Could you do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m on morning sick call tomorrow. Would you take it for me?”

  “Take it for you?” Tyler said, surprised.

  “I have some things to do and I don’t want any shit from Cramer about not showing up. I’ll be leaving early, as soon as the sun’s up, but I’ll be back before noon.”

  Tyler looked suspicious. “I know you’re supposed to be winning hearts and minds,” he said, “but don’t you think this may be a little overambitious?”

  “It’s just a sick kid,” David said, “nothing special, but someone’s got to check on him. It won’t take long.”

  “You sure about this?”

  “As sure as I’ve ever been about anything.” David closed the drawer and straightened up. “I’ll tell you this,” he said matter-of-factly. “I wasn’t so confident about the specifics of what you’ve been saying, but you definitely got the general tone of this place right … real fucked up.”

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Tyler said, “even if it’s somewhat provisional. What do you want me to say if anyone asks where you are?”

  “Tell them I’m on a house call.”

  Chapter 15

  DAVID SET HIS ALARM for 5:15. He turned it off before it rang twice. He picked his flashlight off the floor and shined it around the barracks. Everyone was asleep, including Tyler. No one even turned over. He dressed and, taking two canteens, walked outside. It was just light enough to see. The mists covered the ground, drifting up around the edges of the buildings. David could hear the small sounds of the plateau carried in on the heavy morning air. It was almost cool.

  David went to the dispensary, picked up the instruments and surgical packs and went back to the mess hall. The cooks did not seem surprised to see him hours before anyone else. They offered him some eggs, but he said no. Instead, he drank a cup of black coffee while the sergeant filled his canteens.

  It was almost dawn when he reached the motor pool. As he walked through the gate, he stopped. Half-hidden in the shadows next to the office was the jeep. Tom was sitting behind the wheel. Damn, David thought, but he didn’t fight the sense of relief that passed through him.

  “Who told you?”

  “Captain Tyler.”

  “It figures. You know, you don’t have to go with me.”

  Tom was wearing his web gear. There were a couple of grenades hooked to the straps. “I’ve done crazier things,” he said. “About yesterday—you get used to doing things over here quick. There ain’t a lot of second chances.”

  David nodded and looked east at the lightening sky. “Gonna be another scorcher.”

  Tom started the engine. “Yeah, ain’t that the truth though.” They drove out into the shadows surrounding the 40th.

  “Peaceful, isn’t it,” David said.

  “It’s pretty sometimes,” Tom said, “but dawns can be pretty confusing. The Australians don’t like ’em. We had some combined maneuvers with them in the Delta. The British taught ’em that if you’re gonna be attacked, it’s gonna come at dawn. Can’t see all that much and the heavy air muffles noise, screws up sounds so you can’t really tell where things are coming from. It’s a time that gives the attackers the edge, and the gooks been around long enough to know it. If anything big’s gonna happen, it’s gonna come right out of this time of day and this light. All the Aussie units have what they call a ‘stand to’ every dawn. Everyone gets on line, even the cooks, and stays there until the sun comes up.”

  “And we don’t.”

  “Every day!” Tom laughed. “Can you imagine our troops gettin’ up and on line for more than a week when nothin’ happens? The rangers do, but that’s all. Americans got to see results.”

  By the time they reached the village, it was well into morning. The peasants out in the fields saw them first. They parked the jeep in the same place they had the day before. No one came out of the huts, and the villagers in the field went back to their work as if nothing had happened.

  “Don’t seem too popular today,” David said.

  “If we ever were,” Tom mumbled.

  A few children came to the entrances of their huts and were quickly pulled back away from the doorways.

  “What do you think?” David asked.

  “The
y’re real quiet,” Tom said.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” David twisted and picked up the surgical kit. He noticed that Tom had cleaned out the back except for the tarpaulin that always covered the seat. A flak vest lay where the cartons of medicine usually sat.

  “What’s in there?” Tom asked.

  “Lances, sutures, a syringe of penicillin. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t so sure I’d be able to get her to let me take him back.”

  Tom, feigning indifference, waved him away.

  Before David had walked ten steps, he knew something was wrong. He quickly crossed the hundred yards of open ground between the jeep and the first hut. He stopped at the doorway and, bending down, looked inside. The sunlight coming through the thatched roof sprinkled across the earthen floor. The hut was empty.

  As he straightened, he saw that Tom had left the jeep and was standing on a small rise a few yards from where they’d stopped. He had put on his flak vest and was carrying his rifle.

  David could see that from the position Tom had taken, he had an unobstructed view of every hut in the village as well as the fields behind it. Suddenly he understood that anyone in the village would have to have made the same observation, and that Tom must have known that, too. For a moment, David hesitated, the whole sweep of the village coming into sudden relief.

  David, without quite admitting it, had stopped believing that one of anything could make much of a difference anymore. You needed teams, groups of people to get anything done. In medicine, you had to have hospitals with dozens of departments and huge laboratories. What could you do by yourself? Things were too intricate, too much had to be known and done for any one person really to accomplish anything on his own. But David understood there was more to that feeling. There was the sense of never having to decide for yourself, of knowing there was always someone there watching out for you, that somehow the process would keep you from making a serious mistake. Yet there in that blistering sunlight, complexity meant nothing anymore. It had all been a charade. No one took care of you. You took care of yourself. You did it yourself. The rest was nothing more than a kind of social faddism. There were only the two of them, and it was enough. Griffen was enough.

  He watched as Tom, giving away nothing, slowly scanned the village, only his finger moving as it slowly stroked the trigger of the M-16. It was, for all its seeming casualness, not an innocent gesture. There were to be no second chances. If someone decided to start something, they would have to end it or Tom would. It was that simple and that real.

  David heard a noise behind him and spun around. A chicken scurried across the hard-baked ground. Letting out a sigh of relief, he relaxed. He was as startled by the sudden sense of responsibility as he was amazed to think that he would have come here alone.

  The second hut was larger than the first and darker inside. A rug hung from the ceiling, partially concealing the back wall. David stepped inside. He waited a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dim light and then started to walk to the back. His foot sent a dish spinning across the floor. The noise startled him. He’d kicked an ashtray and bent to gather the cigarette butts. A few of the butts were still warm. Kneeling, he stopped moving and slowly looked around the hut, holding his breath. He could see a cot and a hamper behind the curtain, but otherwise the hut was empty.

  He relaxed, dropped the cigarettes back into the dish and stood up. There was a small window along one side wall at the back. Whoever had been in the hut could have left through it right after they drove up. David was about to leave himself when he looked again at the hamper. Maybe there was something in it to show this was the child’s hut, some of the pills or the mother’s apron. He didn’t want to have to go through the whole village to find out where the kid lived.

  The hamper was filled with clothes. Lifting the lid, he pulled out a piece of cloth. Something metallic hit the ground. Even as he heard the sound, he knew what it was and his heart began to beat quickly. He gripped the lid and held it right where it was. In the dim light, he could see a shirt crumpled at the top of the hamper. There were epaulets on the shoulder with a single raised star.

  Holding his breath, he felt along the inner edge of the hamper. He moved his finger slowly along the rough wicker surface. His finger passed over the first hinge and then touched the wire. It was hanging loose from the back of the lid. Sweating, but breathing again, David carefully lowered the lid and, bending, patted the earthen floor till he found what he was looking for. He was careful to walk backward in his own footprints as he left the hut.

  Tom, who had moved closer to the first hut, remained expressionless as David opened his hand. It was a grenade pin.

  “Where did you find that?” he asked.

  “In a hamper in the hut. I pulled out a shirt and it fell out. The shirt had a star on the shoulders and there were cigarette butts in a dish. Some were still warm.”

  “Do what I say,” Tom said. He took the pin and with an exaggerated gesture threw it into the dirt behind him. “Point to the first hut,” he whispered.

  David pointed. Tom shook his head and pointed to a hut at the opposite end of the village, but as he pointed David saw that he flipped the M-16 to automatic.

  “Stamp your foot like you’re angry. Now, when I push you, start walking back toward the first hut, take half a dozen steps, then stop like you’ve changed your mind, and then head back to the jeep. Don’t pay any attention to what I do. Just get back to the jeep.”

  Tom suddenly shoved David, pushing him backward. Before he could recover, Tom had turned and walked over to where he’d thrown the grenade pin. He bent as if he were looking for it. David had only taken three steps when Tom yelled, “Over there.” The shout startled him, but he kept moving. He stopped, and as he turned he saw Tom out of the corner of his eye, his rifle in firing position, running off in the opposite direction. Within seconds, they were a dozen yards apart.

  “Captain!” David turned around. Tom, near the last hut, pointed toward the vegetable garden behind the village. “Up there,” he yelled. “I think I see ’em,” and he started to run past the huts toward the garden.

  David couldn’t see anyone as he kept on toward the jeep. He climbed behind the wheel and, his hand trembling, switched on the engine. A few minutes later Tom reappeared, coming up from behind the jeep. He had circled the village. As Tom got in, David put the jeep into gear and, even before he settled into his seat, started to drive away. They drove for a few minutes. David tried to collect himself.

  “You thought they were still in the village, didn’t you,” David said, trying to sound calm.

  “Yeah”—Tom had taken off his web gear and sweat-soaked flak vest—“or not very far away.” He threw them both into the back. “They might even have still been in the hut. There’s probably a hundred miles of tunnels around here; could have been a trap door in the floor. Cigarettes don’t stay warm all that long. Sorry I pushed you, but if they was watching I wanted ’em to think we were arguing. Most people wait until an argument’s over before they decide anything themselves. You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “Look,” Tom said, “nothin’ happened. It ain’t the first grenade that goes off that should worry you,” he said good-naturedly, “it’s the last.”

  “It wasn’t a dud,” David said. “They didn’t have the time to set it up right. When they saw you get out of the jeep, they must have decided they’d better leave. There was a piece of tape holding the wire down to the back of the hamper. It came loose. If it had stayed in place, there wouldn’t have been any slack; the wire’d have pulled out the lever when I lifted the lid and the grenade would have gone off. You scared ’em. I mean it. No,” he said, stopping Tom from interrupting, “it’s the truth and you know it.”

  “Hard to know that,” Tom said, “but there is one thing that bothers me. They might not have expected us to come back today, but there sure a
s hell wasn’t no reason to rig a booby trap. These villagers know the war; they know the real thing when they see it, and we ain’t close to the real thing.”

  “Meaning?” David asked.

  “Maybe whoever they were that set it up ain’t from around here. It could have been a kind of reflex thing. See some U.S. troopers and get rid of—”

  David reached over and put his hand on Tom’s shoulder, stopping him from talking. “Thanks,” he said. “No, I mean it,” he said softly. Tom seemed to blush. “To tell you the truth,” David went on, “whatever the reason, I’m glad it didn’t go off.”

  Tom laughed. “Yeah,” he said, “me, too. Believe me, if the damn thing’d gone off, they wouldn’t have let me get away either. Nothing starts until the trap is sprung. It’s one of the rules.”

  For the rest of the trip back to the 40th, they were both silent. Neither mentioned the woman or the child.

  Chapter 16

  “GOING OUT AGAIN?” TYLER asked as david put away the last of the gear from the trip. Tyler noticed that it hadn’t been used. “Only asking,” he added quickly, “in the event that I have to explain things to our leader a second time. He’s rigid, but not dumb.”

  “No,” David answered. “But if I do, I’ll let you know in plenty of time.”

  “Good. Cramer made it perfectly clear that schedules are schedules and if they are not adhered to they are no longer schedules. There are times when he can be remarkably insightful.” But he stopped talking when he realized David wasn’t listening.

  David kept busy the rest of the afternoon, but toward the end of the day, the events of the morning caught up with him. He could shake everything; the foolishness of going back to the village, not understanding what the warm cigarette butts meant, even opening the hamper. What he couldn’t put out of his mind was the fact that except for Tom, some incompetence on the part of whoever had set the grenade, and a few extra seconds, he’d still be in that village, probably buried by now with no one ever knowing what had happened to him. It was so bizarre as to seem almost funny; and, indeed, he might have laughed if he hadn’t remembered the sudden dryness in his mouth as he waited for the grenade to go off. Whatever had saved him, there hadn’t been much of a margin.